Retail sales facilities such as large department stores often offer products for sale to consumers on featured product displays designed to attract consumers' attention to the products. Products may be set on featured product displays for example, based on seasonal considerations (winter/spring/summer/fall), holiday considerations (e.g., Christmas, Thanksgiving, Halloween, or the like), or product-specific considerations (e.g., new product, clearance product, or the like). Retail sales facilities may set their inventory management systems to update the inventory management databases to indicate that the featured products are set on the featured product displays by the workers based on a date scheduled for the start of the featured product displays. Such updates are made on an assumption that the featured products are set on the featured product display by the workers at the retail sales facility prior to the scheduled start date of the featured product display.
A problem with such updates of the inventory management databases based on the product feature scheduled start time is that products are not always timely set by the workers on the featured product display prior to the start date of the featured product display. For example, the product may not be timely delivered to the retail sales facility, or the workers may not timely pick the feature-designated products from bins in the stock room to work the products to the featured product display. Also, the workers do not always enter every task they perform at the retail sales facility into their electronic device, often leading to situations where certain worker tasks and inventory of certain products at the retail sales facility are not always properly recorded in the inventory management database.
A result of the above shortcomings of conventional feature product updating methods is that some products may be indicated as being set on featured product displays, but may be either in bins at the stock room of the retail sales facility, or may not be in stock at the retail sales facility. This may lead to undesired loss of sale situations where a consumer attempts to purchase a product expected to be on the featured product display on the sales floor, but the product is not present on the featured product display. In addition, products that are sold to consumers but not indicated in the system as being set on featured product display may be interpreted by the inventory management system as being in high demand, leading the inventory management system to reorder a disproportionally high quantity of the product without accounting for the fact that the product was in high demand and sold fast because it was offered to the consumers on the visually attractive and easily accessible featured product display. The above situations may undesirably lead to understocking and/or overstocking of products at the retail sales facility.
When workers at the retail sales facility perform the task of placing featured products onto a featured product display so that the product (i.e., a new book, movie, or game) is offered to the consumers as a more visible feature product for a certain target selling period of time, the workers is typically asked to confirm compliance by manually entering data confirming this worker task into their portable electronic device. Then, after the feature selling period, the workers are tasked with removing the featured products and confirm the removal via another manual entry into their portable electronic device. Such activities take up time that the workers may be devoting to other useful tasks, such as assisting customers. Further, a large volume of manual data entry by the workers increases the risk of human error in the data entry, sometimes undesirably leading to misplaced or unaccounted for products at the retail sales facility, and requiring additional quality assurance procedures to double check the accuracy of the data entered by the workers, which undesirably increase operational costs.
Elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions and/or relative positioning of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of various embodiments of the present invention. Also, common but well-understood elements that are useful or necessary in a commercially feasible embodiment are often not depicted in order to facilitate a less obstructed view of these various embodiments. Certain actions and/or steps may be described or depicted in a particular order of occurrence while those skilled in the art will understand that such specificity with respect to sequence is not actually required. The terms and expressions used herein have the ordinary technical meaning as is accorded to such terms and expressions by persons skilled in the technical field as set forth above except where different specific meanings have otherwise been set forth herein.